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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Shannon N. Zenk, PhD¹, JoEllen Wilbur, PhD², Edward Wang, PhD², Judith McDevitt, PhD², Sue McNeil, PhD³, Richard Block, PhD⁴, April Oh, MPH¹, and Nina Savar⁵. (1) Program in Cancer Control and Population Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1747 W Roosevelt Rd, M/C 275, Chicago, IL 60608, 312-355-2790, szenk@uic.edu, (2) Department of Public Health, Mental Health, and Administrative Nursing, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 South Damen Avenue, M/C 802, Chicago, IL 60612, (3) Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Delaware, 301 DuPont Hall, Newark, DE 19716, (4) Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Loyola University, Damen Hall, Chicago, IL 60626, (5) Great Cities Urban Data Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, 412 S Peoria Street, Room B15, M/C 350, Chicago, IL 60607

This analysis examines relationships between aspects of the neighborhood built environment and adherence to a home-based walking intervention among African-American women living in metropolitan Chicago. Two-hundred and seventy-eight midlife African-American women participated in the Women's Walking Program, a home-based, moderate-intensity walking study. Either a standard or an enhanced version of the intervention was randomly assigned to one of two data collection sites located in community health centers in Chicago. Women were recruited widely (77 zip codes). Two-thirds resided in the city; the remainder in the suburbs. Heart rate monitoring, exercise logs, and weekly reporting of walks via a telephone response system measured adherence to walking. On average, participants completed 29% and 45% of the expected walks in the standard group and enhanced group, respectively, during the adoption/intervention phase. Environmental indicators including street connectivity, land use mix, aesthetics (e.g., green space, vacant lots/abandoned buildings, industrial land use), and spatial access to facilities conducive for walking (e.g., parks, shopping malls, recreation centers) were measured within a 1-mile buffer from each woman's home. Their neighborhoods varied considerably in the amount of vacant lots/abandoned buildings, proportion of 4-way street intersections, and proximity of shopping malls. Associations between environmental indicators and adherence will provide information on whether the built environment modifies the effectiveness of an individual-level intervention to increase walking. To the extent that the built environment is influential, individual-level interventions may need to add an intervention component directed at changing the built environment or to incorporate strategies that assist women to overcome environmental barriers.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss why attention to the built environment is important for individual-level physical activity interventions.
• Identify four features of the built environment that may affect walking.

Keywords: Environment, Physical Activity

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered